


Trepidation

by ThePsuedonym



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Mass Effect 3, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 12:56:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7758670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePsuedonym/pseuds/ThePsuedonym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything else falls away. You tremble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trepidation

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by and written while listening to the Mass Effect 3 track _Leaving Earth_. Beautiful song.

Everything else falls away.

The sounds: cries, screams, moans of pain and death-rattles, the _snap-crunch-boom-sigh_ of buildings collapsing into heaps of dust and rubble.

The scents and tastes: coppery, like the metallic tang of the blood coating your lips and tongue; fear, like sweat and piss and fury; gritty, like the dirt and sand in your mouth, heavy and choking as the emotions that mercilessly clog your throat.

The touches: a steadying hand on your shoulder, urgently trying to lead you away from the terrible sight and to safety. Sweat trickling down your nape and along your spine, Death’s cold, skeletal finger caressing your skin intimately, reverent as a lover’s touch. Heat radiated by a body working overtime, adrenaline and noradrenaline throwing everything they have into _run-live-survive-run-run-_ run!

The air around you rings with the silence as sight becomes your dominant sense, ominous and heart-stopping with but a single glimpse of death personified, immortalized.

You stare into the abyss and the abyss ignores you, content with its purpose in — in life, in its existence? What does it matter, when it exists beyond the limited scope of human understanding? You haven’t been a child in years, decades, even; but for that one heart-rendering moment you felt, no, had _become_ as insignificant as microscopic dust.

You feel like a worshipper at last meeting their fabled god. Absolutely _nothing_ compared to the greatness of what lay before you.

The reaper, for what else can it be but death? is large.

Impossibly large.

Words cannot describe how your mind struggles to comprehend its size—

—like _stretchingtearingrippingsnapping_ as it fills your vision—

—like standing at the base of a mountain and craning your neck as far back as it can go and some more for good measure, but still unable to see the peak through the haze of clouds and distance, thinking, _I’m nothing_ —

—like holding your newborn child and knowing, instinctively, _I created this_.

The human mind cannot grasp the concept of infinity. It cannot _begin_ to approach understanding the ancient species that was settling itself upon the Earth so far away, yet so near for its size.

And then you know the truth. God has alighted upon the Earth. The Apocalypse, the Last Judgement, Ragnarök; the end of the world has come.

You tremble.


End file.
